


The Sword and the Red String

by sinuous_curve



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-19
Updated: 2010-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-10 16:05:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Do you know who Ariadne was?" she asks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sword and the Red String

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Меч и красная нить](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1389901) by [mzu_2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mzu_2/pseuds/mzu_2)



> This is a bit of disjointed scribbling of several scenes I've been thinking about since I walked out of the movie.
> 
> Many thanks to nova33 for a quick and helpful beta.

_"He had no joy of her-_ \- Homer

 

"Do you know who Ariadne was?" she asks.

Dom is above her, below her, beside her, inside her. When he closes his eyes, Ariadne wonders if he sees her or Mal, or maybe Arthur, or his children or Saito. Or a pewter top, spinning around and around and around, always teetering on the edge of the moment between ending and eternity.

He doesn't say anything. Dom smells like chemicals and sedatives. When Ariadne closes her eyes, she sees a hotel room done in white through the lens of someone else's dreams and memories. So she keeps her eyes open, always open.

Just before the end, Dom says, "She saved Theseus from the labyrinth."

*

There was a minotaur in the labyrinth.

*

She reads a newspaper with the business section headline:

Fisher Heir to Dismantle Empire

Ariadne feels, wondrously, her world flare outward in sudden, dizzying expansion. With a red pen, she circles the printed letters and writes _inception is impossible_ in the thin paper. She cuts out the article and folds it into her wallet.

*

When she walks out of the Los Angeles airport into blistering sunshine. Ariadne tips her face to the endless, bleached-blue sky and inhales the thick smell oil and smog and reality. In her pocket, she fingers the cool metal of her totem; behind her eyelids she can see a warm glow, a loaded die, and a spinning top.

If she's in a dream, at least it's her dream.

She knows the restrained hand that lands on her shoulder is Arthur's. She knows they're going to get in a cab together. She knows they're going to go to a hotel. She knows it will all be real.

*

The problem is that all Ariadne sees when she sleeps are other people's dreams.

*

Mal's skin is soft when Ariadne touches the naked rise of her collarbone. "Ma chère," Mal sighs, leaning against the sill of an open window in a hotel room done in white, destroyed.

"Mal is French for bad," Araidne says. They're both naked and the first rule of Architecture is that you never, ever build from memory. It's all just make believe and missing puzzle pieces fitted together in ways they don't belong.

Do someone else's dreams count as memory?

Mal slides her arms around Ariadne's waist and presses their bodies together: breasts, bellies, hips, thighs. Ariadne buries her face in of the soft skin of Mal's neck and Mal circles around her, whispering.

Dom does not know her like this.

*

In Paris, Ariadne realizes what she's always known. Dom isn't going to come for her, no matter how long she waits.

*

Her totem is a chest piece, tooled from gold metal. Just like her mother taught her, in a dim and dusty studio with the skeletons of unfinished work all around, perpetually reaching worshipful hands to the sky. Ariadne remembers the echoing quiet and her mother pressed along her back, callused hands over her smaller ones.

Damp from the shower, Ariadne lays naked on a bed and sets her totem upright on her stomach. She hated her name for a long time, the way it tripped uncomfortably off people's tongues and came with a story. Her totem shudders on her flesh; she gasps in a breath and the queen piece topples.

Just like she's meant to.

*

Ariadne watches Arthur button his shirt, smooth down his tie, brush his hair.

Someday, Eames will either say something explicit or lose patience and just kiss him. Araidne can picture the look on Arthur's face as he fumbles for the loaded die in his pocket, assuring himself of reality. She laughs and laughs and doesn't explain why.

*

"You could come and work for me," Saito says with a young man's mouth and an old man's eyes.

Araidne smiles. "Give me a month."

*

The flight was ten hours long. When she looks in the mirror, she doesn't know whether she'll see herself, or a gray suit, or a white winter coat and, when she blinks, sometimes she sees an amalgam of all three.

Yusuf told her about the dreamers he gives his compound to. She understands, now, the desire to remake reality once you know that you _can_.

*

"I'm not doing that anymore," Dom says. "It's too. It's too dangerous."

The word he's looking for is tempting, but Ariadne doesn't call him on that. His children are playing in the sunshine with their grandfather, blond hair flying and laughter floating through the air. Mal is, at last, bone and dust and memory.

Ariadne dreams other people's dreams and sees a safe in a dollhouse, a city bending on itself.

"I'm not looking for a _job_," she says.

*

The top spins and spins and spins and falls with a clatter.

*

The minotaur demanded a sacrifice of seven young men and seven young women every nine years. Ariadne gave Theseus the tools he needed to go into the labyrinth and defeat the monster and, thus, became a tool herself.

And yet, Theseus would have died without her.


End file.
